Thursday, September 11, 2008

Underground Hip Hop on Canada's Co-Op Radio

College radio is often the space where underexposed music gets played. On Finale, Gyromite writes in "I Can't Live Without my Radio" about learning about hip hop through college radio, even at a time when maybe some folks were hitting the Internet to discover new sounds. According to the post:

"When I grew up I owe college radio or community radio as the main reason I got into Hip Hop. Growing up we didn't have the Internet, not because we were too poor but just because it wasn't readily available. Those free AOL disks didn't come by my house til maybe 3 years after high school so my Jr high years and high school years were based around radio and TV.

Underground radio was everything to me, I would stay up late at night to tape the show, and have to stay up for an extra 30 mins to flip my tape over. I had a shoe box full of tapes of a show called The Krispy Biscuit.

When I got to university I wanted to do the same thing, and quickly got involved with college radio and started a show called the Promised Land. Long story short the Promised Land expanded to more shows, but only one radio show lives now, the Urban Renewal Project which is Western Canada's number 1 hip hop radio show."

The Urban Renewal Project airs on Vancouver, Canada community radio station CFRO-FM (Co-op Radio) on Tuesday nights 10pm-1am (Pacific time).